‘War on drugs’ harms all classes, races

By The Daily News

Published: Thursday, February 6, 2014 at 12:39 PM.

On even his most mundane days, the president of the United States makes news. He is considered the world’s most powerful man. It doesn’t matter whether the listener likes him or dislikes him, he matters. When the president of the United States speaks, people listen to what he says.

And what President Barack Obama said to The New Yorker aboutmarijuana is new, at least for presidents, and that makes it news. Obama told the magazine that marijuana was a nasty habit and a vice; nothing new there. But he also said it was relatively harmless.

“I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama told the New Yorker. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

It wasn’t an outright endorsement, because he said he hoped his daughters wouldn’t grow up to be pot smokers. Truth be told, alcohol takes a far greater toll on abusers than marijuana.

Obama even suggested that he thought efforts to legalize and decriminalize marijuana should move forward, citing new laws legalizing its recreational use in Colorado and Washington state.

Obama said, “It’s important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”

But in one regard, we feel Obama went astray. Addressing his rationale for legalizing marijuana, Obama said, “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot and poor kids do. And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”

On even his most mundane days, the president of the United States makes news. He is considered the world’s most powerful man. It doesn’t matter whether the listener likes him or dislikes him, he matters. When the president of the United States speaks, people listen to what he says.

And what President Barack Obama said to The New Yorker aboutmarijuana is new, at least for presidents, and that makes it news. Obama told the magazine that marijuana was a nasty habit and a vice; nothing new there. But he also said it was relatively harmless.

“I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama told the New Yorker. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

It wasn’t an outright endorsement, because he said he hoped his daughters wouldn’t grow up to be pot smokers. Truth be told, alcohol takes a far greater toll on abusers than marijuana.

Obama even suggested that he thought efforts to legalize and decriminalize marijuana should move forward, citing new laws legalizing its recreational use in Colorado and Washington state.

Obama said, “It’s important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”

But in one regard, we feel Obama went astray. Addressing his rationale for legalizing marijuana, Obama said, “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot and poor kids do. And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”

Is there any issue that Obama doesn’t frame in terms of race or class? No small wonder; his successful 2012 presidential campaign was one long barrage of class and racial grievances and the tactic served him well. There seems little reason for him to abandon it now.

The president is technically right that a disproportionate number of minorities wind up suffering the consequences of drug laws. But the growing movement to relax marijuana laws is derived partly from the fact that they adversely affect a broad spectrum of people.

Try telling anyone arrested on marijuana charges that lives aren’t adversely affected by pot busts. Tell those whose lives are blemished and job opportunities stunted or lost that the issue boils down to only a matter of racial and class justice.

No one knows what the long-term impact on society will be with marijuana legalized or, at least, decriminalized. There are always unintended consequences, regardless of the intent. What we do know is that the “war on drugs” is costly and ineffective, and there has to be a better option.

A version of this editorial first appeared in the Tuscaloosa News, a Halifax Media Group newspaper.